For some people, it's the gym. For others, it's alcohol. And still others, it's expensive clothes/cars/stuff. For these guys, it's classes. Something has always been taking your money to give yourself the courage to talk to women. If it's not one thing, it's another.

I'd like to thank Subby and a healthy chunk of posters for making me realize this entire time I just needed to man up! All those psych sessions to get over picking up the phone, passing a stranger on the street without crossing it to avoid them, getting so anxious at social events with my (now ex!) wife that I couldn't go anywhere with her, were just money wasted on a corrupt, money grabbing medical field. All the free samples of meds I got until I found the right balance (a nice $4 generic) really drained my pocket-book and lined the corporate coffers of CEOs everywhere.

And don't even mention the psych ward visit!!! What was I thinking, being so depressed that I couldn't function even close to normally in social situations that I tried to end my life. Good thing that was fake too! Nevermind that I have an excellent job, pay my taxes to society, have never been on any sort of government assistance...I'm a gen Y-er! Gimme gimme gimme!

End rant: Some people need pills. As someone who went through 7 different meds before finding the right one, I'm guessing it's not a placebo effect. Therapy is also required though, cognitive is what worked well for me. I still suck socially but you can get to a point where its not terrible. Good enough though. I applaud the people doing this, the best way to get over a fear is to live it. Talking in front of a group with like-minded individuals is an amazing feeling.

As a woman who has occasionally been hit on by shy guys: this is awesome. Can more guys take classes like this? I fell in love with my husband because he was shy and it was sweet and endearing - other guys I have met have been shy and it was as awkward as a prairie dog farking a hippo.

I know right, those losers should feel like it's their fault, after all there is something wrong with them.If they can't fix themselves and get confident (stupids!), they deserve to feel bad and be lonely.People who seek help for mental or emotional problems make me sick! Grrr! What happened to all the real men amiright!

Stupid millenials. I weep for this country. Or at least I would, if I were a woman or gay or something.

Some people have rehabilitating shyness due to extreme anxiety in social situations. Poor responses in social situations cause a feedback loop as people learn to expect poor responses, which makes them even more anxious.

Some medications help reduce the symptoms of anxiety, which along with therapy and social practice, can help people become more comfortable with social interaction.

Ideally, with successful therapy, medication is no longer needed and a person becomes more comfortable with social situations.

I honestly can't see why people would get so high-and-mighty towards people who are seeking help for anxiety issues.

/i am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but I do like eating curry.

They're victims of SAD because they can't talk to another person and if someone looks at them the wrong way they're victims of bullying. They're always victims and can't take their eyes off their navels.

Social Anxiety Disorder may be controversial, but it's not a conspiracy. Sorry, but people find out about real conspiracies. And it isn't about "guys who can't talk to girls". It's about people who can't talk to anyone.The kind of people who go years without making a single friend. Part of what makes a personality disorder a disorder is when it severely affects that person's mental or physical well-being. If you can reliably diagnose someone with that disorder based on a collective set of symptoms, and then can test those diagnosed for increased risk of mental harm, physical harm, or death, which you can do with social anxiety disorder, and find that people with the disorder are consistently at a higher risk for all three, then you can reliably call this a personality disorder. Really, I can understand indifference in this issue, but aversion is more harmful to those inflicted than most people can guess. Sort of like the effects of homophobia on gays, causing an increased risk of mental harm, physical harm, or death.

Can't see a workshop helping me though. Just looking another person in the eyes causes physical pain (have to force myself to stay locked-on, then force myself some more to not stare like a creep due to forcing myself to lock onto their eyes in the first place). Actually going up to a stranger (especially someone I find attractive) trip my fight-or-flight response, resulting in having to force myself to even say a single word while somehow stopping my legs from bolting in the opposite direction.

Then there's the issue where I am incapable of blind empathy. I can't "put myself in their shoes" in order to find something to talk about, because until I've already gotten to know them, they are completely empty of any interests at all. On top of *that* is the problem where I am a tremendous geek. When somebody states an interest in a particular subject, I can't help but begin conversing about the most esoteric details of the topic.

Oh, and let's not forget how "confidence" is an alien concept. I mean that literally. I don't know what it is or how it feels. I whip myself around a race track on a motorcycle in excess of 160mph, but I can't claim any feeling I might describe as "confidence." I just do it, while focusing on the minute, exceedingly important details one must manage in order to avoid eating a cement barrier. When I think about it, I feel quite worried that I'm going to screw up and get mangled. I love pushing my own limits on/in machines though, so I keep going back to track days on my bike, in my car, or at the kart track.

Nobody's been able to tell me what's wrong with me, but then again I grew up in the 80's before anybody gave a damn. All I was ever told was "NUT UP!"

tl;dr - socializing with strangers causes physical and psychological trauma, as does expressing feelings of attraction, and there's no way to get around those pains. Not even booze helps in the slightest.

PsiChick:The Stealth Hippopotamus: Slaxl: You think shyness is a social disorder that's just been invented recently so someone can make money? That's a bit silly, don't you think?

it's not that shyness is new. But now it's a "social disorder" that requires pills. I guess hitting the bar with your friends is to hard.

Is there anything we do now a days that doesn't have a pill to help it along?

Go look up the four D's, you idiot. There is in fact a critera for this, and while modern psychology is basically shiat on a stick, it's not so hopeless it outright makes things up.

Also, it's usually not shyness. It's usually nearly having a panic attack in a social situation. That's a bit different.

The illnesses defined in the DSM are actually disorders - one of the diagnostic criteria is usually that the illness causes someone to be unable to live their lives or function in society. "Normal" shyness hasn't been pathologized.

The problem is that there's going to be a TV commercial saying "do you sometimes feel awkward in social situations? You should talk to your doctor about drug <xyz>." Some people who aren't actually ill by the DSM definition are going to think "yeah, sometimes I feel awkward in social situations! I should talk to my doctor about drug <xyz>!" This is why we have twice-or-more the incidence of mental illness than the rest of the industrialized world. It also cheapens the diagnosis for people who are genuinely ill.

There is a rather large difference between the kind of shyness you can fix with a little alcohol and a disabling terror of personal interaction.One of the reasons I started Farking was a hope that anonymous interaction would lead to easier "real" interaction. It didn't work. I seem normal when I interact with people, but that's only due to years of practicing coping strategies. I tried the 'have a few drinks' method for years but found I still couldn't speak to women unless I was so drunk I was incoherent. The only way I can talk to women in public is convine myself of their unavailability. In fact, it's bad enough that I rarely post anything but lame attempts at humor even with the anonymity of Fark. Just typing this personal of a response is causing an anxiety reaction.To sum up, in spite of being incomprehensible to most, shyness can be debilitating.

There's these guys out there convinced that women are some strange mystical creatures who are so totally alien & mysterious you can never ever understand them. Then they think they have to follow all these steps like its a magic ritual & all of a sudden the girl will fall in love you for saying certain phrases and performing certain actions. Never crosses their minds that they're just other humans beings. They believe in fantasy fiction bullshiat.

A Terrible Human:Nightjars: A regular doctor who gets to spend 10 minutes for an office visit with a patient really isn't going to have the time (and possibly the training and knowledge) to appropriately assess a patient for these types of conditions.

Which is why a good doctors office will offer those services. The place where my mom goes to her primary care doctor also has a psych guy that comes in twice a week and if you're a patient there you have to see him every 1-3 months,he's the one that offered me free counseling but I'm terrified of telling him some of the things that bother me.

Am I reading that correctly?

You go to a doctor that REQUIRES you to speak with a psychiatrist every few months?

my herniated disc:what about social laziness disorder? Can someone give me an insta-extrovert, bubbly, eyelash batting, flirtacious pill?? That facade is so much work and I am way to lazy to bother with it.

the generic is called booze. there are myriad brand names to choose from.

A Terrible Human:Nightjars: A regular doctor who gets to spend 10 minutes for an office visit with a patient really isn't going to have the time (and possibly the training and knowledge) to appropriately assess a patient for these types of conditions.

Which is why a good doctors office will offer those services. The place where my mom goes to her primary care doctor also has a psych guy that comes in twice a week and if you're a patient there you have to see him every 1-3 months,he's the one that offered me free counseling but I'm terrified of telling him some of the things that bother me.

That's not a "good" doctor's office - that's an "exceptional" doctor's office. I've never been to an office that did that, neither has my wife, nor my sister, nor anyone else I could ping on Google Talk in the time it took to write this post.

WhippingBoy:Shyla: This headline affects every person between 15 and 29. They ALL have "social disorders" suddenly.

I've noticed that too... no one views the various obstacles they face as challenges to be overcome anymore. Instead they demand that they be treated as a "special class" and demand that society cater to their challenges.

Personal character, whatever happened to ye?

Do you know how dumb that post sounds, considering that the article is about people taking steps to improve their social anxiety? They are LITERALLY trying to "overcome" their "obstacles."

Lord Dimwit:The problem is that drug companies put advertisements in every single magazine and television show talking about vague symptoms that just about anyone has at some point experienced, and then encourages them to "talk to [their] doctor". Their doctor gets free samples from the drug companies and other perks and often doesn't have time to do a full evaluation of a person to see if they're actually suffering from something pathological as opposed to just being slightly quirky or even completely normal.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with this one. First: direct marketing to consumers for prescription medication. If you put out an advertisement advising people who suffer from some long list of vague symptoms, you're going to get people biting.

Second, general practitioners diagnosing mental illness is often not a great idea. Some mental illnesses are pretty cut and dried, like seasonal affective disorder. Others are very complex, like OCD, ADHD, bipolar, etc. If a person doesn't spend time with an appropriate specialist to get an appropriate medical opinion, you're going to end up with a lot of false diagnosis situations. A regular doctor who gets to spend 10 minutes for an office visit with a patient really isn't going to have the time (and possibly the training and knowledge) to appropriately assess a patient for these types of conditions.

Well, how about fark you? I'm as wary of our tendency to overmedicate as anyone else, but simply acknowledging that this might EXIST and be addressable is not a problem. Don't go tossing pills, but if group therapy helps people become more outgoing, fark you, let them do it.

I don't care if you want to get into the semantics of whether or not it's a "disorder," but if he's providing a valuable service to people whose lives will be improved by it, then yes, he deserves to profit.

Mentat:The Stealth Hippopotamus: Slaxl: You think shyness is a social disorder that's just been invented recently so someone can make money? That's a bit silly, don't you think?

it's not that shyness is new. But now it's a "social disorder" that requires pills. I guess hitting the bar with your friends is to hard.

Is there anything we do now a days that doesn't have a pill to help it along?

So you don't think there's a chemical component to pathological shyness? Do you also think that chronically depressed people just need to suck it up and smile more?

There probably is a chemical component to shyness, sure. And depression is also a real thing.

The problem is that drug companies put advertisements in every single magazine and television show talking about vague symptoms that just about anyone has at some point experienced, and then encourages them to "talk to [their] doctor". Their doctor gets free samples from the drug companies and other perks and often doesn't have time to do a full evaluation of a person to see if they're actually suffering from something pathological as opposed to just being slightly quirky or even completely normal.

We've hit the point where 48% of the American population will be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their life. That's twice the rate of the European Union and Canada. Think about that. Either the EU and Canada are massively under-diagnosing people, or we're massively over-diagnosing people.

Lifestyle of course plays a part as well - Europeans tend to exercise more, for example. Moderate exercise has been shown to be as effective in treating depression as any antidepressant yet invented (except for the most severe cases), but we as a culture would rather take a pill with side effects than jog three times a week.

Now, to be clear, before I get attacked: I'm not saying that mental illness doesn't exist or isn't a major health concern. I'm not saying that you, gentle reader, are lying about whatever illness you may have been diagnosed with. I'm just saying that we as a society have a much, much higher rate of mental illnesses diagnosed than the rest of the civilized world and I don't think constant advertising by drug companies helps.

Mentat:So you don't think there's a chemical component to pathological shyness? Do you also think that chronically depressed people just need to suck it up and smile more?

This thread is too full of pure derp to even try to convince people otherwise.

The main problems, as I see them, are that psychological disorders are overdiagnosed and the diagnoses have inherent subjectivity most times. That being said, having a relatively new awareness about something doesn't mean that it should be automatically disregarded because "it never existed before". Ahh, yes, the good old days, when men were men and everyone drank the same water they shat in.

thismomentinblackhistory:Snarcoleptic_Hoosier: Just meeting the people you chat with online is a huge thing. I've made it a bit of a hobby to actually find the people who I screw around with. And, by default, that means I'll have to travel some pretty good distances.

Snarcoleptic_Hoosier:Just meeting the people you chat with online is a huge thing. I've made it a bit of a hobby to actually find the people who I screw around with. And, by default, that means I'll have to travel some pretty good distances.